Fibre Channel Network MonitoringFor the third time since 2013, Cisco captured the Market Leader title and, like last year, also swept all remaining awards: Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation. Brocade finished as runner-up Market Leader, ahead of Broadcom/Emulex.

Network Performance MonitoringCisco was again selected by respondents as Market, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation leader (second straight year), but relinquished the Price category to SolarWinds (the number two Market Leader, followed by ExtraHop).

Virtual Router/Network Access ApplianceDuplicating 2015 results, Cisco earned the highest IT pro votes for Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation leader and, once more, VMware and Juniper came in second and third across the board, respectively.

WLAN Controllers & Access Points
In yet another product category sweep, Cisco made it four years in a row by winning the 2016 Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation titles. HPE/Aruba and Dell rounded out the next two Market Leader positions, accordingly.

Application Delivery ControllersCitrix—for the fourth year in as many surveys—picked up Market, Performance, Reliability, and Innovation leader honors. However, F5 (who took second Market Leader in front of Barracuda Networks) broke up the category lock by taking Price and Service & Support awards.

Virtual ADC ApplianceContinuing its ADC dominance in voters’ minds, Citrix repeated a 2015 Market, Price, Performance, and Innovation victory in the virtual realm, but F5 interrupted the sweep and was named Reliability and Service & Support leader. F5 was again the number two Market Leader, with Barracuda and Brocade tying for the third slot.

“It is an honor to be recognized by IT Brand Pulse and the IT professionals that voted for Citrix and NetScaler as a leader for the fourth year in a row in the application delivery controller category across market, performance, reliability and innovation,” said Sanjay Kapoor, vice president, product marketing, NetScaler ADC at Citrix. “It is also a welcome addition to be recognized as the leader in virtual ADC category in market, price, performance and innovation. With these solutions, Citrix is providing customers with secure access to apps and data on any device.”

Riverbed

Always-On Network Recording AppliancesAs one of two new product categories added to the August 2016 brand leader survey, Riverbed received more than half of the responses to emerge with Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation honors. NetScout was cast as the number two Market Leader, leaving third to Endace.

“We are proud to be recognized by IT Brand Pulse and the IT professionals that voted for Riverbed to be selected in the Always-On Network Recording Appliances category with market, price, performance, reliability, service & support and innovation honors,” said Nik Koutsoukos , VP product marketing, Riverbed Technology. “As more enterprises embrace digital and cloud services, Riverbed will continue to provide the high-definition visibility that is critical to enabling and assuring the success of these transformational initiatives. Our Riverbed SteelCentral product line is the only performance management solution that can deliver comprehensive insight into end-user experience, application, network, and infrastructure performance in a unified, central view. It truly is the command center for application performance for the digital enterprise.”

“Today’s data centers are increasingly complex, often serving as the nerve center for intelligent, distributed and virtualized networks, and our commitment as an organization is to provide scalable, tailored DCIM solutions and life cycle services that make managing those complex networks easier for our customers,” said Enzo Greco, vice president and general manager, software, Emerson Network Power’s data center solutions business. “We’re pleased to be recognized as the IT Brand Pulse leader in Data Center Infrastructure Management because it represents validation of that mission from the IT professionals using our solutions every day.”

Virtual Instruments/Load DynamiX

Storage Performance Validation Software & AppliancesVirtual Instruments/Load DynamiX took back, from last year’s top vote getter SolarWinds, the overall leadership it won in 2014: Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation. For 2016, SolarWinds was the runner-up pick in these six brand categories, ahead of SANBlaze.

“Virtual Instruments is honored to be recognized for the market leading position of our Load DynamiX Enterprise storage performance validation and analytics platform,” said Len Rosenthal, chief marketing officer at Virtual Instruments. “Having the IT user community acknowledge our performance advantages, cost-effectiveness, and track record of innovation is an important endorsement of the unprecedented value we bring to storage architects and engineers in helping them assure performance and control storage costs.”

Dell EMC

Multi-Tenant Storage ArraysEMC (now Dell EMC) was chosen for the second consecutive year as the Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation favorite. HPE 3Par and NetApp/SolidFire turned up two and three (in that order) for Market Leader.

Datos IO

Distributed Database Backup & Recovery
In the first-ever IT Brand Pulse survey for a product category expected to expand dramatically in the next few years, Datos IO edged out the other listed competitor, Talena, to take all six leader titles: Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation.

Veritas

Enterprise Backup Software & AppliancesVeritas—now split from Symantec—stood on its own to unseat the reigning Market Leader champion EMC (who had to settle for second this time around). Veritas was also the respondents’ choice for Performance and Reliability awards, while the Innovation and Price titles went to Veeam, and Service & Support to Commvault (the third-place Market Leader finisher).

About IT Brand PulseIT Brand Pulse is a trusted source of research, data and analysis about private, public and hybrid cloud IT infrastructure, including servers, storage, networking and operating platforms. Learn more at www.itbrandpulse.com.